


When The City Goes Silent

by stelleappese



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Canon Trans Character, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-20
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-16 08:25:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4618398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stelleappese/pseuds/stelleappese
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elliot may or may not have a crush. White Rose turns out to be more protective than what she originally thought she was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When The City Goes Silent

**Author's Note:**

> I'm projecting so hard, you don't even know.

The first time the kid just opens the door of White Rose’s car and walks in, sitting in front of her and looking vaguely apologetic, she’s too surprised and impressed to be angry.

By nature, she values her privacy _very much_ , and she would _love_  to know how the kid –Elliot, his name is Elliot- found her in the first place. “I don’t appreciate your lack of good manners”, she says, but her tone is light, and she can’t help staring at him, trying to figure him out. She would have preferred to look uninterested, like she was expecting Elliot to do what he’s just done, to at least give the impression of still being in control of the situation.

“I’m sorry”, he says, unexpectedly, not meeting her eyes. He looks genuinely chastised. White Rose tilts her head, her eyes thinning a little as she looks at him. “I’ve got… I need your advice”, he says, and he’s about to start rambling when White Rose raises a hand and stops him.  
“I don’t know who exactly you think you are to just barge in like this”, she says, her tone cold, “And it’s not going to happen again. Am I clear?”  
Elliot nods. White Rose’s watch beeps.  
“Three minutes”, she says, “Go straight to the point.”

And he does. Or tries to. That’s just the way he is, she supposes; he takes long pauses, frowns at his feet, looking like he’s listening to somebody’s voice. She studies him discreetly from behind her phone, and at the same time she coordinates the next move of one of her projects. No way she’s letting this kid mess up her schedule.

His problem, it turns out, is a very technical and very legitimate one, so at least he had an actual reason to bother her. He listens to her carefully as she tells him what to do, whispers a ‘thank you’ before scrambling near the door and basically jumping out. She looks at him as he walks through the immobile traffic, shoulders hunched, looking around suspiciously and trying to walk as far as he can from the rest of the passerby.  
What a weird kid…

*

“I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, sorry”, Elliot says, the second time around. He’s slammed the door particularly hard after basically throwing himself inside; he looks positively terrified. “They’re following me, they’re always fucking following me around.”  
“Who?”, asks White Rose, in spite of herself, then winces. She doesn’t have time for this. It’s already bad enough that she’s stuck in traffic, again, which makes her incredibly twitchy; she also has nine phonecalls to make before she gets to her next meeting, and this is _not_  helping.  
“I don’t know”, mutters Elliot.  
“Right”, sighs White Rose, grabbing her phone, “You can stay here until…”, she waves her hand around, “Whoever it is that’s following you leaves. Just be quiet.”  
Elliot nods. He also sits up straight, knees close together, hands gripping them tightly; but his fingers keep tapping his knees nervously.

For seven minutes and eighteen seconds, the only sounds in the car are White Rose’s voice, the beeping of her watch, and the occasional tapping of buttons on the phone. Elliot keeps looking around, or frowning at nothing, or shaking his head and looking kind of mad.   
Something, thinks White Rose, trying not to lose patience at the _horrifying_  accent of the guy trying to speak Mandarin to her on the phone, something isn’t right with the kid.  
She hangs up. Thirty seconds too early for the next call. She looks at her watch and waits.

“That dress looks very nice on you”, says Elliot, all of a sudden. He says it in a murmur, almost shyly, and immediately looks away.  
It’s a sleeveless white dress, with a large skirt and a pattern of big yellow flowers and a yellow faux-belt around her waist. A bit too noticeable for her, but she was in a very good mood when she chose her outfit the night before, and she does love the shoes that go with it, of the same exact colors, with tiny yellow ribbons on the toe-box.  
“I like the way you worded that, so I’m going to pretend you did _not_  just speak”, White Rose says, bringing the phone up to her ear. He nods, eyes stuck to his shoes, an endearing blush giving his pale face a little color.

Again, Elliot jumps out of the car without a warning. Again, White Rose wonders about what’s going on with the kid.

*

“It’s a safety breach”, insists Fang, glaring at her, “How does he know where you’re going to be? How does he find you? And why didn’t you tell me the _first time_?”  
She goes on and on, Fang, pacing around White Rose’s office, talking about how she needs to be careful, what if somebody betrayer her, what if the kid hacked them, why isn’t she _worried_  for fuck’s sake.

She’s an impressive sight, Fang; tall and lean and with a perpetual murder stare, definitely not helped by the fact she dresses like she’s getting ready to fight for her life during a zombie apocalypse, and that her military-style boots make her walk like she’s on her way to assassinate someone.  
She is, remarkably, probably the only person on the face of the planet White Rose actually _wants_ to spend time with; the only one that would actually _hurt_  not to see frequently.

“Nobody betrayed us, and he hasn’t hacked anything”, assures her White Rose, “I just take that route all the time, he must have noticed.”  
Fang stops pacing and stares at her, her mouth falling open. “You _what_?”, she snaps, “I told you to change our routine as often as you can!”  
“Well, I _like_  my routine, and nobody even knows where to begin to look for me, or that they _should_  be looking for me, or who the hell I am”, complains White Rose, fingers tapping furiously on her keyboard.  
“The kid obviously does know where to look for you”, says Fang, crossing her arms.   
“He’s not a problem”, says White Rose.  
“What if he _becomes_  a problem?”, Fang says. She’s not being confrontational, not now. She’s just worried. White Rose understands that, she knows Fang’s heart is in the right place, she doesn’t question her motives or her loyalty to her.   
“Then I’ll take care of him”, White Rose says, firmly. She disconnects from the chat room and gets up a fraction of a second before her watch beeps. She’s got a meeting in ten minutes; just four more items on her to-do list.

*

If there’s something White Rose hates, apart from people wasting her time, is having to _wait_. In this case, wait for someone to get in touch with her. It won’t happen again, she’s determined to make this particular piece of work get that; this is not how things work with her. She’ll take this call. Three minutes, because she’s a generous woman. After that, she’ll have to teach him some manners.

She’s planning the most satisfying way to make that happen when Elliot opens the door and gets in the car. He doesn’t _close_  the door, not completely, which is weird.  
“We really need to stop meeting like this”, she says.  
“Sorry”, Elliot says, and hands her a paper box with minuscule strawberries printed on it, “I get hungry around this time of the day, and I figured you wouldn’t waste time getting a snack, so I got you one”, he says, quickly. He pauses for a fraction of a second, then nods and hops out of the car.  
“Thanks…”, murmurs White Rose, a bit too late. It’s a chocolate cupcake with tiny little marshmallows on top. White Rose stares at it for a moment.

Her phone rings. She sets the cupcake, still in its box, on her lap.  
“I’ll get back to you”, she says, and immediately hangs up. Fuck that guy. She’s going to spend the next three minutes eating her goddamned cupcake.

*

“I get it”, says Fang. The desk in front of her is filled to the brim with bits and pieces of hardware. White Rose isn’t entirely sure what she’s doing, but then again, Fang tends to improvise a lot, think outside the box; that’s probably why they get along so well: they make up for each other’s limits. “The kid has a crush on you.”  
White Rose blinks. “He can’t have a crush on me”, she says, “I’m old enough to be his mother.”  
“Maybe he’s got mommy issues”, shrugs Fang, “Also you don’t look that old.”  
“I’m sure it’s not that…”  
“Well, he hasn’t asked for anything”, says Fang, letting something drop on the floor with a clang, “He hasn’t threatened, hasn’t offered… looks to me like he just likes you.”  
“We spoke for eight minutes and forty seconds in total since we first met, and it was mostly work-related; how can he _like_ me, he doesn’t even _know_  me!”  
Fang grins at her. Her eyes go thin when she does that, she looks kind of menacing. “ _Obviously_ , those first three minutes were enough for him to make up his mind”, she says.  
“This is _not_  good.”  
“I agree with that. Puppy love might be cute, but you can’t have that”, says Fang, “The next time you see him, tell him to fuck off.”  
“But…”, starts White Rose. Her watch beeps. She curses between her teeth.  
“Unless you want to keep him, that is, but as your friend I have to advice against that”, says Fang, sounding incredibly serious, “Get rid of the kid.”

*

It’s raining hard. It’s a miserable-looking day, and White Rose feels like going straight back home and curling up in her soft, warm, comfortable bed. After all, she _could_  take care of business from there…  
She opens the little window separating the driver seat from the back of the car. “How much longer?”, she asks, but the driver just looks as miserable as she feels.  
“The rain isn’t helping”, he says, in English, then starts muttering in Chinese. White Rose doesn’t understand his dialect that well, but it’s something about Americans freaking out for the rain in a city where it rains _all the time_.

White Rose flops on her seat. She needs coffee. A lot of coffee. And a good night sleep.  
Plus, she’s already made all the calls she had to make, and given out orders via chat, and, really, she’s way too early to do anything else (which is almost as bad as being late), and she’s _so bored_. She starts looking out of the window, sits up when she notices a familiar figure walking up and down the sidewalk.

Something’s wrong, she thinks. The way he’s moving, and gesturing, and speaking like someone’s there, but he’s all alone under the relentless rain. Something’s wrong.  
She opens the door, leans out, rain pouring on her. “Elliot!”, she calls out, and he turns towards her. She swallows. She doesn’t like the look in his eyes, he looks like he has no idea what the hell is going on. “I’ll give you a ride”, she says, trying to sound soothing, “Come on in, you’re getting soaked…”  
Elliot hesitates. He takes a step forward, then stops, then starts walking towards her. She sits back down, waits for him to be inside before she closes the door.  
“Is everything all right?”, she asks, gently, and it’s like something _snaps_  inside Elliot’s head, because he drops on his knees, wraps his arms around her waist, and pushes his face against her.  
“I’m crazy”, he murmurs, his voice shaky, “I’m crazy, I’m crazy, I’m crazy…”

Truth is, White Rose isn’t much of a… physical person. And she had assumed Elliot was like her on that front, by the way she’d seen him behave; so the last thing she was expecting was _this_.  
Her phone falls on the floor, she raises her arms, alarmed, but after a few seconds, when Elliot starts murmuring something about being alone, over and over and over again, she moves her arms down and wraps them up around him. He goes quiet, his body still shaken by silent sobs. White Rose runs her fingers through his hair and Elliot’s fingers twitch around her blouse.

She asks the driver to take her to the penthouse. It’s not where she actually lives, it’s one of the houses she or Fang occasionally crash at, if the situation calls for it. She has to hold Elliot’s hand to make him follow her into the elevator. From there, she calls Fang and tells her where she is, and that she’ll be working from there today. Elliot leans against the mirror on the wall of the elevator, eyes puffy and red, looking tired and lost.  
“Here’s what you’re going to do”, says White Rose, once they’re inside, “You’re going to take a shower. There’s a bathrobe in the guestroom bathroom, you can wear that. Someone’s going to bring you clothes later on. I’m going to order something to eat, and you _are_  going to eat. Then you’ll take a nap. A long one. Whatever you had to do today, it’s cancelled.”  
Elliot nods weakly. “You’re being very nice to me”, he murmurs.  
“You look like you can use it”, answers White Rose, “I’m going to be right here. I have work to do…”  
Elliot nods again. White Rose wishes she knew how to help.

*

“You”, says Fang, stuffing her umbrella in the umbrella stand with a bit too much force, “Need to stop.”  
She hangs her dripping coat. White Rose gets momentarily stuck staring at the drops of water as they fall and pool underneath it, feeling uneasy.   
“Stop what?”, she asks, forcing herself to look back at the desktop, where she’s giving orders on the chat while having three private conversations at the same time.  
“Doing the thing. Don’t look at me like that, you know what thing”, snorts Fang, sitting next to her and putting a hand on her arm, leaving the plastic bag she’d been carrying on the counter, “You need to stop taking in strays. And you need to stop thinking you can fix other people’s lives. It doesn’t work that way.”

She’s probably right. After all, she’s the people person between the two of them. White Rose has a few troubles actually _getting_  people and their motives, she needs them to spell things out, and she’s got a very low amount of patience for that.

“I’m not trying to fix him”, she says, “But…”  
“But he was walking in the rain like a poor abandoned puppy, and he looks like he hasn’t slept a day since he was born, and he’s kinda cute…”, says Fang. White Rose straightens up a little on her chair, snaps at one of the people she’s talking to, closes the chat and bans them from it.  
“Something isn’t right with him”, she says, “What if I had ignored him and he’d ended up hurting himself?”  
“Not your responsibility”, sighs Fang, “It’s not because of you that he’s like that.”  
“It hurts my brain”, White Rose mutters, “How… lost he is. How confused. I couldn’t just leave him out there.”  
“This is dangerous”, says Fang. She looks worried, but also vaguely resigned. After all, if White Rose hadn’t had the bad habit of taking in strays, she would never have met Fang in the first place…  
“I know”, says White Rose.

*

Elliot sleeps for fourteen hours, twenty-six minutes, and thirty seconds. And still, when he wakes up he looks exhausted. He sits on the couch, all curled up, blue eyes lost in the distance. White Rose orders something to eat, then goes out. When she comes back, the food is still intact, and Elliot is sleeping again.

She doesn’t know how to do this. How to actually take care of someone. She sits on the armchair near the couch and looks at him, wondering exactly what’s going on with him. He didn’t look exactly _healthy_ when they first met, but this is something else entirely. Is nobody taking care of the kid? Most likely, someone is, and he’s just refusing their kindness, or not even recognizing it. He’s like her in that, at least: there’s a reason why he has to hack people, it’s the only way he has to understand them.

He wakes up with a startle, looks surprised to see White Rose there. He sits up, rubs his eyes. “I thought you’d left”, he says, in that low, sleepy drawl of his.  
“I did”, she says, “I came back.”  
“Are you gonna leave again?”  
“Not tonight”, White Rose says.  
“Ok”, murmurs Elliot.

“Sometimes I don’t know what’s real”, he says then, suddenly, like the words are being punched out of him, “Sometimes I don’t know if _I_  am real.”  
White Rose looks at him, quietly. He looks so angry, for some reason, like it’s his fault his brain is playing tricks on him.  
“I can’t remember things. Important things. Or people. I forgot…”, he shakes his head, rubs his eyes for a long moment, “I keep hurting everybody around me, everybody I care about, all the people that have actually been _decent_  to me, I try so hard to help them, and I end up ruining everything, every single time I…”  
“Have you considered maybe you should try helping yourself, first?”, asks White Rose, softly, “How can you help anybody if you’re falling apart like that?”  
Elliot goes quiet. His shoulders relax, he looks pensive.  
“I wanted to save the world”, he says.  
“It seems to me the world doesn’t really want to be saved”, says White Rose.  
“That’s just one more reason to try”, insists Elliot.

White Rose smiles at him, shaking her head. Elliot looks at her for a few seconds, eyes wide, then looks away, looking a bit embarrassed.  
“You said every time you tried helping someone it backfired, yes?”, she asks, fishing her cigarette case from her purse.  
“I…”  
“Perhaps you should consider changing your ways. Perhaps you should start letting people take responsibility for their actions, let _them_  decide if they want to be helped. Perhaps”, her voice loses a bit of the steel in it, gets softer, gentler, “Perhaps you should start having the guts to ask for help yourself.”  
There’s a long pause. White Rose’s watch beeps two times, then three. Elliot keeps staring in the distance, frowning, head tilted in a way that suggests he’s listening to some voice only he can hear.  
“Do you ever need help?”, he asks in the end, turning to give White Rose an uncertain look.  
She smiles at him again, kicks off her shoes and curls up on the armchair. “All the time”, she says.

*

White Rose leaves while Elliot is sleeping on the couch, the tv on, flashing blue light on the wall behind him. He looks calm, for once, like there’s nothing chewing at his brain.

When she comes back, he’s not there anymore.

*

White Rose opens her eyes a moment before her alarm clock starts ringing. She turns it off, gets out of bed, sighs. It’s been a week since she last saw Elliot; fsociety has given no signs of life since then. She’s starting to worry about him. Which, as Fang would tell her, is a very stupid thing to do.

She walks into the shower and turns on the water before her entire being can wake up enough to protest at the cold spray. It helps clear things up, the cold water raining on her head; helps turning on her brain. She usually mentally lists the things she has to do, the places she has to be, the people she has to meet. Today, she just wonders how… recommendable it would be to show up out of Elliot’s apartment. Maybe kick the door down if he doesn’t answer.

She puts on some make up, stands in front of the chair where her outfit for the day is waiting for her. It’s a mint green dress, very stern, very grown-up. She looks at it for a moment, then she turns around and walks into the closet, grabbing the white dress with the yellow flowers.

The traffic is, predictably, awful. White Rose goes through the usual routine, but she keeps looking out of the window all the way to the office.

*

“He’s a grown man”, says Fang, making dinner while White Rose takes her mind off things almost violently writing code. She doesn’t get to do it that often anymore, since it takes a lot of time, and she doesn’t have any to spare. Plus, she has people doing it for her, now. “He can take care of himself.”  
“Right”, snorts White Rose, putting out her cigarette.

She remembers doing this when she was younger, sitting in the lab of her university with her legs crossed on her chair, writing and writing on what now looks to her like an antique remnant of an entire different life, eating instant noodles in the sporadic occasions in which she remembered she actually needed food to live. She loved doing it, taking things apart and putting them back together, playing with the very essence of them. But then she would look up at the watch and wonder what had happened, had she really been doing it for _all that time_? The edges between days and months had been blurred, then. She’s not going to let that happen now.

“Ok, maybe he’s not that good at taking care of himself, but still, you’re not responsible for him”, shrugs Fang, “You’ve tried. There’s not a lot more you can do.”  
“I know”, says White Rose, wondering why she can’t take her own advice.

*

Two weeks go by. A thin rain is falling, but the sun is stubbornly shining, making the familiar river of cars glitter delicately. When Elliot walks inside the car, White Rose drops her phone.

“Hey”, he says, smiling softly. He still looks tired, still looks on edge, but there’s something different about him. He’s still wearing a hoodie, but the hood is down; his hair looks longer, it’s starting to curl messily. He doesn’t look quite as pale as the last time she saw him. His eyes are steady into hers, they look more focused. There’s a quiet, tentative sort of determination in the way he looks at her.

White Rose means to answer to his greeting, instead she slowly changes seat, moving beside him, then wraps her arms around his neck and squeezes him tightly for a long moment. Elliot stiffens a little, but then his hands move to her waist, and he pushes his face against her shoulder.  
“How are you?”, she asks, gently pushing him away the strict necessary to give him an enquiring look. She wonders if he’s had anything to eat today, wonders if he’s slept enough.  
“I’m all right”, he says.

Then he grins at her; a mischievous, bright little grin. “I’m here to talk business”, he says, lightly but resolute. He looks about ready to take over the world, fuck saving it.  
White Rose grins back. Her watch beeps. She sits back, smooths down her skirt, takes a cigarette out of her cigarette case. “I’m listening”, she smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) I just kinda need White Rose to kick butts and Elliot to be ok /o\  
> 2) Fang is a very tiny reference to Pacific Rim, because why the hell not  
> 4) There *is* sort of a low-key reciprocated crush going on here  
> 3) Seriously though, could you imagine those two trying to conquer the world, I would 100% watch that


End file.
